Sir Digby Jones, the Beeb's new face of business. Photograph: David Dunkerley/BBC

There's a new corporate problem solver in town and he doesn't have a catchphrase. That's how confident he is. Digby Jones: The New Troubleshooter (BBC2) does have Union Jack cufflinks, though, which the director shows in closeup, clearly trying to make them "a thing" in lieu of a "You're fired". Without actually nailing his colours to the mast – Jones congratulates himself on never having joined a political party despite speaking at last year's UKIP conference – we see this is a man stuffed with national pride. He holds a globe in his hands, munificently gazing down on the British Isles between his thick fingers, looking for all the world like he wants to give it a cuddle. Politics be damned, what Britain needs is a sirloin of a man with a kind, pink face. Because it's 2014, he's "the new troubleshooter" not the 1990s version, Sir John Harvey-Jones, who would roar into a Kettering warehouse, his red tie flapping like a windsock as he thwacked some bally sense into a quaking board of executives. His boisterous attitude has been replaced by Digby's quieter, warmer counsel. That's Digby, not Lord Jones of Birmingham as he could insist we call him: your first clue that he's no Sugary pretender. He keeps his grandeur firmly in the glovebox of his Range Rover.

The format borrows the well-worn aesthetic of narrative reality shows such as The Armstrongs, Fergus O'Brien's superb 2006 series for BBC2, making the usual heavy use of glockenspiels and plucked strings to denote "a spot of trouble at t' mill" while also liberally strewing the mise-en-scène with those posed portraits of individual staff in front of the workplace; the modern equivalent of an Edwardian photo of a blacksmith standing stiffly in a shop doorway. And The Apprentice's London is slung in for good measure, too: all helicopter shots and phone calls made inexplicably by the Thames, just so you know he means business.

"I have backache, which is what you'd expect at my sort of age," says Mike Muxworthy, 60-year-old owner of Hereford Furniture, shrugging gently as he surveys a row of ottomans he knows he can no longer lift. But his 30-year-old business is not – as is so often the case on TV – a floundering ship guided by a proud, recalcitrant captain who refuses to move with the times.

This is quietly confident troubleshooting without all the usual concessions to soapy manipulation you find in The Apprentice or Mary Portas's high street ramraids. It's not "their last chance" or "decision time". Even Liza Tarbuck's nicely pitched narration tells you, between every line, not to panic. It's a tiny but encouraging sign that sometimes TV can still trust itself to keep our attention once we're past 30 without waggling the peril in our faces madly and shouting "Bang!" every five minutes.

Back in Hereford, Mike talks with quiet resignation about the internet, the jargon-heavy meetings that confuse him, and the company's need for "a whizz kid". And waiting in the wings is his daughter, Kate, also the firm's sales and marketing manager. It's like watching a furniture version of King Lear. Once you realise this, the poignancy is unbearable. The troubleshooter isn't there to overhaul the business; his job is to gently loosen Mike's grip on the rudder. "We're old men, mate," Jones says as he takes the wooden crown from Mike's grey head. "She's the future now." I nearly cried. That's it, Lear, put your feet up. Cordelia's got it covered.

Talking of death, the now-terminal BBC3 screened an hour of pixelated writhing for those still under 30. It could have been bodies or just as easily the opening titles to long-running ITV schools programme Picture Box. InPorn: What's the Harm? the programme makers juggled their need for ratings (put porn in the title) and their inability to show the graphic material under discussion (blur everything and rely on your presenter's face for reaction). Radio 1 DJ Jameela Jamil was credible and articulate but the director struggled to fill the hour with embarrassed teenagers and dry statistics. Instead we saw a lot of Jamil, pounding pavements in a series of hats, gazing up at a jumbotron thoughtfully, or standing Lolita-like next to a poster of a giant, pink, open mouth. After half an hour of "we can't show you this" obfuscation, the screen suddenly filled with the music video for Skepta's All Over the House featuring real porn stars having sex, no blurring. They could show you that, apparently. A perfect, jumbled epitaph for a channel that never quite worked out how to talk to a generation it worried was constantly distracted by something more interesting on their phones.

And another thing

Three series of Game of Thrones have thundered past without interesting me at all. But this season I'm suddenly hooked. (I've seen the first three episodes.) I can't face the hours of catching up so I'm pretending this is season one. It's brilliant so far.